Falling Hard (Billionaires in Disguise: Lizzy, #1) (4 page)

“Just the once,” Lizzy said. If he asked her
to go on another Dom-Date, she didn’t think she should go.

Rae asked Lizzy, “So, you don’t think he’s
going to call you or something?”

Damn, but she did not want to talk about
this. “It’s not like that. It’s understood that it’s just the one
date. I don’t even know how much money he must have spent on it. At
least a couple thousand dollars, maybe more, depending on how much
those concert tickets were. We met the band during the sound check
and sat in the second row. Then we went out for dinner. That bottle
of wine he ordered was ridiculous, and tasty.” Lizzy knew a little
about wine, just enough to know that it was an incredible
bottle.

Rae asked, “Are you afraid of him?”

Terrified.

“Oh, hell, no,” Lizzy insisted. Rae’s silvery
dress rubbed Lizzy’s back where The Dom had laid stripes on her
skin. Her lips felt full, and the fear and pain swirled around her.
Lizzy caught her breath, praying for a miracle to make her stop
twitching. “I’m not afraid of him at all.”

Liar.

Lizzy crossed her legs, rubbing her thighs
against each other, and just that little motion made her clit throb
like a heartbeat. Her breath caught in her throat. Pulses traveled
through Lizzy’s skin, and she shivered against the warmth of Rae’s
cushiony body. She closed her eyes, reveling in it, astonished.

Oh, God.
She had to
stop
this.

Georgie leaned into her, cramming Lizzy more
tightly against Rae’s side. “What did he do to you?”

Lizzy’s face burned. Even Georgie didn’t know
things about Lizzy that The Dom had somehow known. “I don’t want to
talk about it.”

With even more knowing coyness in her voice,
Georgie asked, “For how long?”

Lizzy wrapped her arm around her body,
shielding herself, and stared out the front windshield with a wan
smile plastered onto her face. “Three hours.”

Georgie laughed at her.

Lizzy couldn’t bring herself to laugh with
her. “It’s not going to be weird, right?”

“No. If his pattern holds, he’ll pay a little
more attention to you tonight than usual, and he won’t have a date
with him, in deference to your feelings. Next week, though, it’s
back to business as usual.”

Lizzy wasn’t sure if that would be better or
worse. “I can handle that.”

Rae moved her arm out from between Lizzy and
herself and rested her arm on the back of the seat. With more room,
Lizzy settled into Rae’s side to face Georgie and laid the back of
her head on Rae’s bust.

Lizzy’s hand drifted down and rested on Rae’s
leg, near her knee.

She felt Rae’s head whip around and stare at
her hand, so she didn’t move it. Her hand so innocently rested on
Rae’s silvery dress and her thigh underneath.

Georgie asked Lizzy, “You talked with The Dom
about this beforehand, right?”

Lizzy should be flippant. She should be cool.
“Oh, yeah. And you’ve had a Dom-Date, and some of our friends have,
so I knew. It’s just, well,
wow
.”

“Yeah. That’s the problem with The Dom’s
dates. Like a good comedian, he always leaves you wanting
more.”

Despite every fiber of her body that wanted
to stand up and shout
Can’t you see that I’m freaking out?
Lizzy laughed and nodded. “Yeah.”

Georgie’s voice turned gentle. “Don’t do
anything stupid, okay? If you meet someone interesting tonight, go
have some fun. Don’t mess up your head. That’s when things get
weird.”

It was already weird. The Dom had uncapped
that cauldron of crazy in her head and thrown her in. Maybe she
should find someone else, anyone else, to take her mind off her own
insanity. “I won’t do anything stupid. I knew what it was. I know
what
he
is. But, just,
wow
.”

Rae leaned forward. “
What
is he?”

Georgie’s answered, “That’s a loaded
question. What do you think, Lizzy?”

The Dom was Satan Incarnate, as beautiful as
an angel and as tempting as sin, and he had eaten from the Tree of
Knowledge. “Damned if I know.”

Georgie asked Lizzy, “Do you know anything
about him, like where he’s from?”

Lizzy shrugged, reaching hard for
nonchalance. “Somewhere else. He has a British accent most of the
time, very Londony, but sometimes I hear French or Italian or
something else. Something Asian, maybe.”
And Russian.
“Not
from the Southwest, that’s for sure. But he knows a lot of people
here.”

Georgie told Rae, “I’ve worked for him for
over a year now, and I think he’s as smooth and polished as mirror.
Whatever you are or want is reflected off of his perfectly shiny
shell. If you ask him a question about himself, he won’t exactly
answer, and then for some reason you spill your guts about
something intensely personal without meaning to, and you have this
great conversation, and after you leave, you realize that he didn’t
answer you, and you still don’t know anything of any substance
about him. Even the things you think you know are suspect, because
he might be reflecting you.”

Lizzy stared at Georgie.
Jesus H.
Christ.
What the hell had happened to
her
on her
Dom-Date? Was there a simmering pot of pain that he had thrown
Georgie into?

“Like,” Georgie continued, “I think he likes
live music and books, probably. He almost always takes a date to
some sort of concert but he must choose it based on what she likes
because sometimes it’s rock, sometimes pop, sometimes classical,
and he took Nona to a country music concert. If you talk to him
about books, either he’s already read the book that you’re talking
about, or else he has you text him the name and author, and quite
often, a week later, he’ll have something interesting to say about
it. But I’m not sure, because most of the girls are bookish types,
so it might be the reflecting thing again.”

“I don’t think so,” Lizzy said. “He’s read a
lot. He’s read everything that I’m reading for class: Pope, Woolf,
Tolstoy, Shakespeare, Sand, and both T.S. and George Eliot, and he
can quote stuff. I don’t think you can fake all that.”

Georgie nodded. “And he has moderate,
intelligent views on sports and politics, and anything else you ask
him about.”

“And he speaks a couple languages,” Lizzy
said. Her heart clenched.

Georgie nodded. “I’ve heard him speak some
sort of Chinese and something Middle Eastern.”

Lizzy spoke over her, “I’ve heard him speak
Russian.”

God,
had she heard him speak Russian.
He had spoken Russian to her until she was flayed alive by just his
words.

Lizzy sucked in a deep breath, trying to keep
her voice from trembling like her whole core. “And he likes
sex.”

“Yeah, the sex,” Georgie said. “He loves
women,
craves
women, and likes to be with women, in the
plural,” Georgie said. “He likes sex, and if you’re ever with him,
it’s almost,” she looked at Lizzy, “like he gets inside your head
and knows what you want, even if you don’t know it or don’t want to
say it. It’s the mirror thing.”

Lizzy nodded, and her eyes burned again. She
hadn’t known what she needed. Not at all. She never would have
guessed.

The car careened around a sharp corner,
pressing them all back into the leather seat. Lizzy’s hand braced
on Rae’s thigh.

She glanced up at Rae. Rae’s cheeks were
flushed, and her eyes were taking on a glassy sheen. Lizzy pressed
her body harder against Rae, and Rae’s slight inhale told Lizzy
everything.

Yep, Georgie was a sex psychic.

“A couple hundred years ago,” Georgie said,
“The Dom would have made a great sultan, and his whole harem would
have all been like Lizzy here, still suffering after-shock orgasms
a week later.”

“I am not,” Lizzy protested. Her whole body
quivered.

Georgie’s brown eyes and knowing smile turned
kind, even pitying. “Sure, you aren’t. He’s odd in some weird
ways.”

He was, evidently, a sadist, something Lizzy
had never suspected, and so skilled at it.

“Do you know whatever happened to that cat?”
Georgie asked.

“The black one hanging around work a couple
months ago? I thought The Dom had someone take it to the Humane
Society.” Lizzy had seen him put it in his car.

“No. He just said that he ‘took care of it,’
but he wouldn’t say anything else.”

“You don’t think he hurt it.”

“I don’t know. No one knows.” A hint of a
troublesome thought flitted across Georgie’s eyes.

“He’s not evil like that. He’s not evil at
all.” But he was. Or else he hadn’t known what he was doing to
her.

Georgie said, “Yeah, well, we don’t know
what’s underneath that shiny mirror-ball. Maybe there’s some
swirling dark secret. Maybe he’s just a regular guy who lives an
odd lifestyle. He might just be a really private person, though
that’s not likely, considering. Maybe there’s nothing under the
shell, and that shell is just all there is.”

Lizzy tucked her other hand between her own
leg and Georgie’s and clenched it into a terrified fist. “What did
you do afterward?”

Georgie shrugged. “I threw myself into my
job.”

Tears scalded Lizzy’s eyes again, so she
laughed. Her laugh made her body bob against Rae’s boobs, and Lizzy
felt Rae’s small inhale. She trailed her fingers lightly along the
shiny material that barely covered Rae’s thigh.

The car pulled up to the downtown hotel. The
crowd on the sidewalk turned a little toward them, but because the
Southwest was the outback of nowhere, they turned away just as
soon. Georgie opened the door and stepped into the dark night and
shining lights. Old-fashioned incandescent light bulbs, those
clear-glass ones with the fiery filament inside like Edison had
made in New Jersey over a century ago, studded the hotel wall like
the pioneers had just discovered them. Lizzy could blame any tear
duct malfunction on the stupid lights. She pulled away from Rae and
scooted across the seat toward Georgie’s butt that was blocking the
way out of the car. She poked Georgie’s scarlet ass, and Georgie
stepped to the side.

In minutes, they would be upstairs in the
suite, and The Dom would be there. Acting normal was going to
require all the East Coast panache that Lizzy could muster.

She turned back to Rae and laid her hand on
Rae’s leg again.“You won’t say anything about this, will you?”

“Of course not.” Rae’s kind smile warmed
Lizzy. At least Rae had her back.

“Everyone wants a date with The Dom, and
everyone is bleary for a day or two afterward, and it’s
embarrassing.”

“I won’t say anything. I don’t even know what
you guys were talking about.”

Lizzy laughed. “Of course.”

One last chance to sex Rae up for her
audition with The Dom.

Lizzy leaned over and kissed Rae smack on her
lips, and her fingers tightened on Rae’s leg. Rae’s lips were
shock-still under Lizzy’s for an instant, but they softened. When
Lizzy rocked back, Rae’s eyes were shining, and her cheeks were
pink.

Damn. The Psex Psychic pstrikes again!

Lizzy retreated from the car and stood on the
sidewalk, waiting for Rae to get a move on.

The light bulbs glared white outside the dark
car in the cooling night, and the crowd on the sidewalk milled
around them.

Show time.

The three girls rode the hotel’s mirror-lined
elevator way, way up. Lizzy caught a glimpse of herself, a pale
gold shrimp among the normal-sized girls. Her blond hair was so
short that it fluffed up in curly spikes. Her tight, sleeveless
gold dress looked like a crystal-encrusted leotard.

Panic crashed through her.

She looked sixteen again, a very small, very
driven sixteen.

Lizzy gripped the rail behind her back. Her
knees shook, and her high-heeled shoes wobbled on the elevator’s
carpet.

The elevator doors slid open straight into a
ballroom where a crowded party was swinging. The clear air smelled
like cocktails and perfume, normal things, and Lizzy breathed. She
wasn’t sixteen. She was fine.

Jeffrey Jackson, a wide, tall black man in a
black suit and the head of the security team at The Devilhouse,
stepped in front of the elevator doors as they walked out, and
Georgie and Lizzy smiled at him and nodded.

He nodded and stepped back, but he didn’t
smile, not with someone new there. If it had been just Georgie and
Lizzy and his back had been toward the room, they would’ve gotten a
grin and a wink.

Rae asked, “Was that Dom?”

“No,” Georgie whispered. “That’s Jeff, one of
the security guys. He’s nice. He just takes his job seriously.”

“Okay.” Rae straightened, standing far above
Lizzy, and they walked in.

Like all The Devilhouse’s parties, most of
the men were in their thirties or forties. Some had daubs of ash on
their temples. Some thought they were silver foxes. Most Doms wore
dark suits, and they stood straight and still as if they crackled
with virile power, whether they did or not.

The subs wore sparkling, jewel-toned dresses,
mostly stretchy fabric, and looked like bright birds fluttering
around their dark Dom trees. Most sported some sort of a metal
choker or chain around their slim necks, so cliche. No VPL marred
the lines of anyone’s backside because practically no one,
including Lizzy, was wearing panties.

The few Lady Dommes wore dark formals. One
Domme, an older woman with a silver beehive hairdo, wore a navy
satin suit and rested her hand on the arm of a Latino man. His
royal blue suit was stylish and betrayed that his young body was
lean and corded with muscle. The gold chain resting over his tie
was probably a collar.

Lizzy vaguely recognized some of the Doms and
subs. In general, prospective members attended up to three parties
to make an impression, and then were either admitted on a
provisional basis or ceased being invited to parties.